Okay, before all the big pro Obamacare supporters are ready to start calling their elected officials and encourage them to vote for this behemoth. I want you to carefully read this text from Wednesday nights "Obama-mercial" and as you doing so, think of yourself, not as a d-student but as a person holding a doctorate who is giving care and also presumably as someone who has living parents who will be aging in this proposed system:
Transcript taken from Rush Limbaugh's site(just try and ignore Rush's commentary and read the questions posed to the president and his verbatim answers:
"RUSH: Let's go to one of the most interesting exchanges in the infomercial last night. And ABC's Jake Tapper, in describing this, says: "President Obama struggled Wednesday to explain whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face. The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists" during the ABC News infomercial on Obama healthcare reform. And the first question that we're referring to here is Dr. Orrin Devinsky. He's a New York neurosurgeon. He asked this question of President Obama: "If your wife or your daughter became seriously ill and things were not going well and the plan physicians told you they were doing everything that could be done and you sought out opinions from some medical leaders in major centers and they said, 'There's another option that you should pursue,' but it wasn't covered in your plan, would you potentially sacrifice the health of your family for the greater good of insuring millions, or would you do everything possible as a father and husband to get the best healthcare and outcome for your family?"
Let me translate the question. A neurosurgeon asked Obama: "Okay, you've got the healthcare plan that you're going to prescribe for everybody else. Your wife or your daughter comes down with a major illness. Your plan goes through the diagnosis. And then you find out that there's some other doctor out there somewhere with another procedure and another form of treatment, another opinion, but your plan doesn't cover it. Are you going to stick with the plan you forced on everybody else, or are you going to use your wealth and go outside the plan to get the treatment for your wife and daughter that other people are not going to be able to do because they don't have the money?'' That's the question. He did not answer it. Obama: "You're absolutely right. That if it's my family member, uh, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care. But here's the problem that we have in our current healthcare system, is that there is a whole bunch of care that's being provided that every study, every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier."
All he did there was admit: "Yeah, I want the best healthcare possible." Well, so the hell does everybody else! That wasn't the question. The question was: "Are you going to go outside the plan that you have prescribed for everybody?" See, the dirty little secret is he's going to be exempt from the plan, as are all members of Congress. The question was a good one: "Are you going to go outside the plan if you find a better doctor, better treatment that your plan doesn't cover?" "You're right. I'd go get the best care I could. I want the best care." Then comes this irrelevant, non sequitur answer: That we have a bunch of care that's being provided that may not be making us healthier. Folks, I'm telling you, the answer to this question you need to focus on: Obama is looking to cut healthcare. He's looking to cut it because that's the only way he can keep costs where they are or reduce them, which is not going to happen anyway. We have the best healthcare system in this country and he's going to restrict access to it, as a means of saving money.
That's the only way he can do it. So he wouldn't answer the good doctor's question. The answer to the question is, for President Obama: "Yeah, I'm going to use the wealth I've acquired and I'm going to go get the best treatment I can." But the vast majority of Americans will not be able to do that because they aren't going to be able to afford it. They're going to be stuck in a plan that doesn't everything they might need, and Obama's answer is: "Well, maybe you don't need the treatment. Maybe you don't. Maybe your quality of life is such you don't need it anyway. We'll save money." Next question. Member of the audience. Jane Sturm: "My mother is now over 105. But at 100, the doctors said to her, 'I can't do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.' I said, 'Go for it.' She said, 'Go for it.' But the specialist said, 'No, she's too old.' But when the other specialist saw her and saw her joy of life, he said, 'I'm going for it.' That was over five years ago. My question to you is: Outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, a quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age?"
Obama: "I don't think that we can make judgments based on people's 'spirit.' Uh, that would be, uh, a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that, uh, say that, uh, we are going to provide good quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we're going to have to make. But understand that those decisions are already being made in one way or another. If they're not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they're being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know -- and your mom know -- that you know what, maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller." Do you realize how cold and heartless that answer is? This woman is asking about her mother. And everywhere she went, except one doctor, refused to put in the pacemaker. "Nah, she's too old; she's going to die anyway."
So they found a specialist: "Maybe this woman really loves living. I'll put it in." She's lived five years with the pacemaker, and still Obama: "Maybe you're better off to tell your mother to take a pill, take a painkiller." See, we have to have rules. "We have to have rules. Your mother should have died five years ago, lady. She would have been better off taking that painkiller." Who says we have to have his rules? The President of the United States is not a king. He's not an autocrat. He's not a ruler. He doesn't get to set the rules. Obama has taken it upon himself to do so. This woman found a way to get her mother a pacemaker. With Obamacare, you just heard the answer: It wouldn't have happened. I know how this stuff works."
Under this plan, it won't be the patient/docs making all of your healthcare descisions, heck it won't even just be patients/docs/insurance companies now we get to add the gov't into the descision making process of what healthcare one will be allowed to get. Think about it
that will teach those insolent poor/sick people! fire an employee! oh wow. i'm sure the cute blond assistant you already underpay at $15/hr will never bounce back. hrrumph! hahaha
